October Surprises
1980 and 2004
related page:
1980 October Surprise
Reagan/Bush deal with Iran to delay hostage release
"On October 19, 1980, Bush was
dealing with Khomeini!"
www.consortiumnews.com/2006/092006.html
The Bushes & the Truth About Iran
By Robert Parry
September 21, 2006
www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html
several articles on the October Surprise
www.washington-report.org/backissues/0591/9105011.htm
A web search on "Octopus" and "Danny Casolaro" will also add to this.
book reviews of three books about October Surprise
www.namebase.org/books59.html
Honegger, Barbara. October Surprise. New York: Tudor, 1989. 323 pages.
Parry, Robert. Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery. New York: Sheridan
Square Press, 1993. 350 pages.
Sick, Gary. October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of
Ronald Reagan. New York: Times Books - Random House, 1991. 278 pages.
Osama's October Surprise, 2004
October 28, 2004
www.gregpalast.com
Florida's Computers Have Already Counted Thousands of Votes for George W. Bush
by Greg Palast
Before one vote was cast in early voting this week in Florida, the new
touch-screen computer voting machines of Florida started out with a
several-thousand vote lead for George W. Bush. That is, the mechanics of
the new digital democracy boxes "spoil" votes at a predictably high
rate in
African-American precincts, effectively voiding enough votes cast for John
Kerry to in a tight race, keep the White House safe from the will of the voters.
Is FEMA planning a "terror alert" on Election Day?
www.legitgov.org/essay_kane_fema_terror_drill_102904.html
note: this meme distracted some government critics from the more mundane, but devastating techniques used to rig the election in Ohio and several other states. It is a warning to avoid getting sucked into plausible, yet false claims of upcoming scandals.
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/10/october-portents.html
OCTOBER SURPRISE? IS THE "OSAMA VIDEO" RELEASED ON FRIDAY THE OCTOBER
SURPRISE?
Richard Clarke was on ABC Nightline talking about the Osama
video.
His conclusions:
-- Osama wants Bush to win (to keep the status of "al-Qaeda" in the
Muslim world).
-- Bush let Osama get away (from Tora Bora).
For more on Richard Clarke, see
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/040504_Clarke_orchestra.html
Richard Clarke's Orchestra: Maestro Plays Simple Waltz;
Shackled Media Manage to Dance Along. by. Jamey Hecht, PhD.
Ted Koppel even mentioned that Osama pointed out that Bush was reading "My
Pet Goat" and gave al-Qaeda more time for the attacks. This last point
is very curious. It's understandable that OBL would want Dubya re-selected (they
are a synergistic relationship), but why would al-Qaeda point out the "goat
story" that hints at the (intentional) paralysis of the air defense system?
This is a story that has many layers to it, and probably consists of deception
upon deception woven into it. OBL attacking Bush in many ways strengthens Bush
for some of his supporters, but also reminds others that Bush wasn't able to
capture him. Bush and al-Qaeda have a synergistic relationship -- each feeds
the power of the other. That synergism doesn't require that they like each other,
or that they stop attacking each other, but each is behaving in ways that strengthens
the others' influence. (9/11 saved Bush's administration, and Bush's blundering
in Iraq is the best recruiting for al-Qaeda.)
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2004/10/bin-laden-timing.html
Saturday, October 30, 2004
From Osama bin Laden's latest broadcast:
www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm
"We agreed with Mohamed Atta, god bless him, to execute the whole operation
in 20 minutes. Before Bush and his administration would pay attention and
we never thought that the high commander of the US armies would leave 50 thousand
of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they
most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening
to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying
attention to airplanes butting the towers which gave us three times the time
to execute the operation thank god."
It is impossible to know whether we should take anything bin Laden says at
face value, but this comment on the timing of the attacks is interesting. While
the timing of the broadcast makes it clear that Osama is playing right into
Bush's election campaign by reminding Americans of why they instinctively look
to Bush for security from the likes of bin Laden, the sly attack on Bush's goat
book reading leaves enough ambiguity that Bush can argue that bin Laden is actually
campaigning for Kerry, thus further increasing the value of bin Laden's words
for Bush. Brilliant. Bin Laden continues to earn his pay.
Here's another commentary on the Osama surprise. It is a much rosier view of
Kerry than what a Kerry administration would be, but the general conclusion
(that OBL wants Bush) is probably true. It also overlooks the fact that Cheney
and the people around him are very smart, and probably also want Iraq split
into smaller countries (even if Bush isn't that bright). A civil war that converts
Iraq into three new nations would probably make it easier for the US to dominate
the oil fields (divide and conquer).
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 02:45:08 -0400
From: genemessick @ earthlink.net
Subject: Bin Laden Emerges to Influence Election
So. Who would Osama bin Laden vote for?
I asked and answered that question 2 months ago,
for those of you who file away my commentaries.
Now, Osama has brought us his October surprise in
his first video in 2 years, almost on Hallowe'en, no less!
(Be aware we have seen only 6 minutes of the 18 so far.)
To see who bin Laden came out to campaign for
-- and make no mistake about it, this was a commanding
campaign endorsement, aimed at overwhelmingly
influencing OUR election -- let's first look at who bin
Laden does NOT want to be elected our President.
John Kerry has promised he will involve nations around the
world, those George Bush alienated so thoroughly, in the War
on Terror. Bin Laden's bunch, as the CIA just recently told
us, has transformed from a structured "organization" to a
worldwide "Movement". That's why even we say it doesn't
matter much if we kill him, his franchised Worldwide Hate
America Movement would be alive and well, if not more
empowered by his martyrdom.
Bush has proven he cannot gather other nations to fight his
self promoted War on Terrorism. So this is a plus in bin
Laden's eyes. Kerry says he can, and as the new guy on the
block, he most likely will organize a tight, effective world
wide noose in many nations around bin Laden's Movement.
This means bin Laden would not have Kerry cornered in Iraq,
as he has Bush pinned down, depleting his forces man by man,
day by day, drip by drip, with no chance to win the
guerrilla war. The longer bin Laden can keep his problems
isolated to Iraq deserts, the more assured he is he will win.
Secondly, Kerry is intelligent, and unlike Bush, will draw
intelligent people around him. Bush, though savvy, by any
measure is not very bright, and had totally NO foreign
experience when he took office. He has absolutely no
understanding of any culture outside Texas, other than the
swaggering imitation Cowboy image that has not worked in
our favor anywhere thus far. That's why our nation is in
the general mess internationally that it's in.
To bin Laden, the Bush Administration's massive ignorance
about Islam and what drives al-Qaeda has worked greatly to
his advantage. Bush cannot imagine how to win the hearts
and minds of Iraqis, other than promise them "democracy".
He will have to continue blowing up a major portion of Iraq
before it can be made "secure" for elections. But even
then, his promise is only an empty word, full of sound and
fury and signifying nothing Iraqis can understand. The more
he fails to deliver on rebuilding their infrastructure
(nowadays we are blowing up more than we are building) and
securing the peace, the less Iraqis want anything to do with
his idea of "democracy". It's not truly outrageous to say
that Iraqis might elect Saddam Hussein if he were on the
ballot, preferring the stable security he provided to the
devastating insecurity that is all Bush has delivered.
On the other hand, Kerry can and would draw around him
people of good sense about international affairs, to provide
intelligent guidance for America in the years ahead. This
would not be good for bin Laden, because if we understand
him, and speak the language and culture of Arabs as Bush
could never do, then this works against bin Laden's goals.
He needs to keep America angry and stupid. Look at the
Bush Presidential campaign: promote anger, hatred and fear
in the general population. Now that's a portrait of stupid.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
So. What is there about George Bush that bin Laden likes?
Well, there is no denying that George Bush is the greatest
recruiting officer the al-Qaeda Movement has ever seen. If
Bush had gone after bin Laden at Tora Bora and killed him,
then had the good sense his Daddy did in the first Gulf Oil
War and go home, al-Qaeda would be a minor player on the
world stage. But, as some blond woman yelled out on Fox
Newsytainment tonight, "the War on Terrorism is not going to
be ended in a few years, it's going to go on for 40 or 50 years!"
Yep. That is what Bush has caused. Endless war for
generations into the future. "Invisible" flag-draped
coffins as far as the eye can see. And it suits bin Laden
just fine. He knows we cannot win a war against a people
who believe that dying is the best way to get to heaven.
Bin Laden also understands why Bush switched his focus from
Afghanistan to Iraq. He knows, far better than most
Americans do, that Cheney's plan to invade Iraq was on the
drawing board even before Bush's selection to office. He
knows what every Arab in the middle east knows: Bush's
Second Gulf Oil War, like the first one, is only about who
controls the oil under Arab sands. Some 65% of the World's
oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf States, none of which
are democracies. By contrast, the US sits on only 3%, but
uses 25% of the world's oil. Now you know why Oilman
Cheney cooked up the plan to invade Iraq about 6 years ago.
They only needed an excuse.
Bin Laden provided the excuse on 9/11, or at least Bush
claims he did. One has to wonder what other excuse would
have been used by Oilman Bush to invade Iraq, had 9/11 not
happened. Clearly, they had been cooking up the WMD
excuse for some time.
Bin Laden knows that the Cheney/Bush Administration's
absolute dedication to securing control over Iraq's oil will
keep Bush tied down in the desert for years to come, and
will make it impossible for him to go after the Movement
as it grows to threaten other free nations around the world.
As the Movement expands, expect kidnappings of Americans
and ransoms to become a world wide al-Qaeda pastime.
Just how will Bush send the Reserves and National Guard
to 60 al-Qaeda infested nations around the world? This is
the unintended consequences of Bush's inability to plan or
design or figure out or guess or surmise or think.
So. You have a choice on November 2.
Vote for John Kerry.
Or vote for the man bin Laden endorsed.
c 2004 -- Gene Messick
Terror Alerts vs. Bush's poll numbers (a very revealing graphic / analysis)
http://juliusblog.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_juliusblog_archive.html#109156476570482138
here are few things that are quite evident from the chart:
- Whenever his ratings dip, there's a new terror alert.
- Every terror alert is followed by a slight uptick of Bush approval ratings.
- Whenever there are many unfavorable headlines, there's another alert or announcement
(distraction effect).
- As we approach the 2004 elections, the number and frequency of terror alerts
keeps growing, to the point that they collapse in the graphic. At the same time,
Bush ratings are lower than ever.
www.counterpunch.org/chuckman10302004.html
Weekend Edition
October 30 / 31, 2004
Fundamentalists in Agreement
Osama's Endorsement
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
It has been a bad few weeks for Bush with discoveries startling enough to
kill, or at least stun, a normal candidate. But there is nothing normal about
Bush. He just keeps plunging ahead, grunting and gasping, like one of the
undead.
We learned that Bush wears a radio device at important events. This fact alone
could explain his strange plodding movements and words, a creature waiting,
eyes blinking mechanically, for each new word in its ear to register before
reacting.
I understand that the existence of a radio device has not been proved, but
it takes a much greater stretch of the imagination than a radio device to
explain the strange shape photographed on the President's back, and science
always favors simple, clear explanations. Some of his legions of loyal followers
in trailer parks across the nation likely favor the idea of a device grafted
to his back by aliens--this is a possibility I suppose--but reason casts some
doubt.
How easy it would have been for Bush to dispel the radio-device idea. He just
needed to call a brief press meeting with the hump in place, removing his
jacket to reveal how a wrinkled shirt could create the distinctive three-dimensional
shape. It would have been a very effective demonstration, but I think we all
know why he didn't try it.
I hesitate to suggest a drug-pumping device similar to that worn by dying
cancer patients, but the damning revelation by Kitty Kelly that Bush was still
doing cocaine during his father's term as President leaves one wondering.
Genuinely-recovered addicts are not that common, and here was a man, a weak
man, addicted to two drugs, alcohol and cocaine. I know the Good Lord can
work miracles, but most experience suggests He lets humans clear up their
own messes.
Perhaps Bush is on some kind of experimental methadone-like treatment. Yes,
I know Kitty Kelly is not a serious biographer, but she is a tough investigative
reporter against whom legal challenges generally fail. The public recanting
by Bush's sister-in-law, the source of the story, means nothing because Kelly
went over her notes with an editor after the original interview. She called
the sister-in-law in the editor's presence and reviewed the points of her
story, having them all confirmed as accurate.
The disappearance of a huge stock of high explosives in Iraq following the
invasion--enough apparently to fill about forty semi-trailers--was to say
the least a rather unfavorable revelation. Please note there can be no doubt
that Bush was aware of this cache which had been under close guard of UN officials,
yet he took no measures to secure its safety during the invasion, any more
than he did for Iraq's priceless cultural artifacts looted from museums at
the time. Note also that analysis of the explosions that have been killing
American troops surely reveals the stolen stock has been used, it being a
distinctive and unusual explosive. Note, finally, that we did not learn of
this dangerous event from Bush, but from that horrid organization, the UN.
Then we had the matter of a study in the Lancet from scientists at America's
own Johns Hopkins University concluding that civilian deaths due to the invasion
of Iraq were at least 100,000, half women and children. Lancet is Britain's
best-known medical journal, and it does not publish rumors. It is peer-reviewed
and highly regarded.
Of course, we have had no counts from the Pentagon of civilian deaths. An
American woman's non-government organization made an effort to count deaths
and came up with more than 10,000, the number most widely cited. Not long
ago, an Iraqi group, people in a much better position to communicate and be
accepted throughout Iraq, came up with the number 37,000, a number generally
ignored in the American press. Now, we have a statistical study showing, at
minimum, 100,000 civilian deaths.
So much for claims of pin-point bombing accuracy, although we should have
all been conditioned to the utter falseness of such claims after the first
Gulf War. I wish American journalists would in future insist that any Pentagon
official making such claims publicly demonstrate them by having planes bomb
dummy homes near one he or she is in on some military proving ground. We know
this will never happen.
The fact remains that aerial bombardment is a crude weapon that always kills
many more civilians than soldiers. The Pentagon favors it because pilots do
not see the details of the terrible things they do and because many more ground
troops would themselves be killed if it weren't for death from the skies.
Clearly the Hitler idea of a terror weapon remains in the thinking of those
who talk of "shock and awe." It has many home-town supporters, too,
who enjoy full-color explosions and flames over dinner without the details
of broken, mangled human beings. Oh, it's like being there, where real history
is happening, only in complete safety from the couch.
Now, suddenly, just days before the election, we have Osama's Jesus-like face
again appearing on every front page in the world. Who benefits from
Osama's re-appearance? At first, you might say Kerry because the face is such
a vivid reminder of Bush's utter failure. He didn't get the guy responsible
for 9/11 (and from this tape we receive, for the first time, genuine evidence
of Osama's involvement), but Bush sure managed to kill a lot of innocent people.
Almost certainly, the re-appearance serves Bush's interests, who for some
unknown reason manages to hold a strong rating in polls narrowed to the specific
issue of security. I know it's a mind-numbing puzzle, but the man
who shirked duty in Vietnam, the man who went AWOL from the National Guard,
the man who spent years frying his brain with alcohol and cocaine, the man
who continued reading about goats after being informed of the strike against
the WTC, the man who has created armies of America-haters with his insane
war in Iraq is regarded as strong on security by Americans.
The only rational explanation for this phenomenon is that Americans
sense Bush's psychopathic qualities and are re-assured by them at a time of
absurdly-exaggerated fear. After all, I had Americans writing me seriously,
after 9/11, that Afghanistan should be reduced to a chunk of radioactive glass.
American fundamentalists' much-beloved Old Testament and Book of Revelations,
not to mention the entire history of Christianity, overflow with such bloodshed
and ravings. Were a poll taken in America about the idea of "just
killing them all," I think the results might be painfully revealing.
Osama and the boys chose a critical moment to endorse Bush because
they know four more years of his violent, incompetent arrogance does more
damage to western interests than any attack they could hope to mount.
John Chuckman lives in Canada.
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